Guns obviously make it easier for people to kill others, though they also make it easier for people to defend themselves. Still the harm that can be caused by knife attacks within a very short period of time, even by someone who doesn’t know what they are doing, can be seen by looking at some cases of multiple victim knife attacks from China (not meant to be complete as we only spent a short time putting this together, though if people know of other cases, I would appreciate hearing about them).

For the average multiple victim Chinese knife attack since 2010: 4.4 people were killed, and 14.5 injured.
Excluding the Kunming Railway Station attack the average is: 3.1 people killed and 8.6 injured.
If you look at all the cases where at least 4 people were harmed the average attack had: 4.7 people killed and 15.8 injured.

March 28, 2014: 7 injured, with 2 (a woman and four year old boy) seriously injured. The attack occurred on the outskirts of Qinzhou city, in the Guangxi province.

Fuzhou Police said in a written statement that the serial collisions killed six, including three children, and injured 13 others. Police said the man lost control emotionally because of marriage issues. . . .

UPDATE: Even extremely strict gun control laws don’t stop terrorists from making bombs. In China on May 22, 2014, an attack where they drove cars through the crowd and threw bombs — at least 31 people were killed and 90 injured.

UPDATE: Of course, mass stabbings aren’t limited to China and the US. Here is a case were five people were killed in Canada, none wounded.

Matthew Douglas de Grood, the son of a 33-year veteran of the Calgary police force, picked up a large knife shortly after arriving at the party and stabbed the victims one by one, said police Chief Rick Hanson.

De Grood, 22, was charged with five counts of murder late Tuesday.

“This is the worst murder – mass murder – in Calgary’s history,” Hanson said at a news conference Tuesday. “We have never seen five people killed by an individual at one scene. The scene was horrific.” . . .

The killer, 48-year-old Wu Huanming, returned home after the attack on the outskirts of the city of Hanzhong and committed suicide, the local government reported. A motive wasn’t known, although reports indicated he and the school administrator may have known each other.

It was the fifth such major assault on young students in China since late March and occurred despite increased security at schools countrywide, with gates and security cameras installed and additional police and guards posted at entrances. . . .

Another boy and a woman were also stabbed, but their injuries were not life-threatening, according to a statement from the police in the Xuhui district of Shanghai.

The attack occurred outside the Shanghai World Foreign Language Primary School at about 11:30 a.m. Bystanders helped grab the suspected assailant, whom the police described as a 29-year-old unemployed man who had moved to Shanghai this month.

The claim was carried in a statement Sunday night by the ISIS-affiliated Amaq news agency. It said the attacker on Sunday was one of its “soldiers” who acted in response to the group’s calls to target countries involved in the U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS in Syria and Iraq. French security forces shot and killed the attacker.

Police sources told Sky News the attacker shouted “Allahu Akbar” as he carried out the attack at Gare St. Charles.

One woman had her throat slit and the other was stabbed to death, Fox News has learned.

The attacker was believed to be a man in his late twenties and of North African background. . . .

A woman stabbed two girls and one boy before turning the blade on herself at a house in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens at 3:40 a.m. Friday, police said. The babies ranged from 13 days old to 1 month old, according to the Queens district attorney’s office. They were all being treated in area hospitals. The adults and two of the children are in stable condition, and one child is in critical condition but expected to live, a law-enforcement official said.

You folks are doing very good work in a variety of areas and I’m sure you already have too much to do, but a central clearinghouse location for a list of non-firearm mass killings would be helpful in many ways.

Arson is a common method of mass killings in Australia, but they are loathe to publish details because copycats are always lurking … and the government and police have a lot of control over the Australian press. I am still working on uncovering arson examples from Oz.